Dec. 8th - the US oath and Ice Cream...

Wed. Dec. 8^th

Today Ron and I took an oath on John’s behalf at the US Consulate.   This experience was anti-climatic at best…picture 33 families with children they have known for 1 ½ weeks waiting for 1 ½ hours in a lobby that reminds me very much of every DMV office in every state that I have lived in.  (Sorry…maybe I am getting tired…)   After the taking the 30 second oath, each family exchanged official paper work with a clerk and we were back on the bus to the hotel. 

Earlier in the day, our adoption agency set up the famous “red couch” photo session where all the children being adopted in our travel group wear traditional Chinese outfits and take a picture together.  We got a cute one of John and his fellow orphanage friends .  The 16 kids in our travel group 

 John and his “best boy” Nathan Johnson

;  and one of our family

.  We took about 10 of the whole group and not one of them is close to turning out so hopefully someone else in the group captured the moment better than we did. 

The Johnson’s leave early tomorrow morning so we enjoyed a last dinner with them and then ice cream for dessert.  We were told that kids from Chinese orphanages typically don’t like cold food items when they first taste them since they probably have not ever tasted cold food.   So we wanted to test whether John was going to like ice cream.  I bought chocolate and gave him a taste of it.  He at first looked puzzled but indicated he wanted more.  By the third spoonful, he got hooked - so much for the proposed notion of one bite for him and one for me.  John grabbed my arm when its motion was clearly not intended for his mouth and I knew exactly what he wanted – no communication gap when it comes to ice cream.